Wednesday 25 September 2013

Conference Roundup

A unanimous resolution to renationalise the Royal Mail. This one can be stopped. Come on, Ed. Say it.

A unanimous resolution to renationalise the railways. Easy. Take back each franchise as it came up for renewal over the course of the next Parliament. Come on, Ed. Say it.

And calls for "compulsory sex and relationship education". Indeed so. By all means bring in people who know about them to teach teenagers the facts about Natural Procreative Technology, about adult and cord blood stem cell research, Natural Family Planning, and about foetal sentience.

Initially including the fact that the State refuses to fund the first two, and instead pours good money after bad in the service of alternatives which basically do not work.

Would these these things be taught in community schools to the exclusion of IVF (nothing else with its failure rate would be funded by the NHS), embryonic stem cell research (all the money in the world has never managed to bring anything at all out of it), the assorted poisons and mutilations of artificial contraception, and procedural realities of abortion? The very reverse.

Let people versed in works such as those of the remarkable Dr Terry Dowling come in and tell teenagers this. Let those who have taken to the media, old and new, to defend even the right to sex-selective abortion come in and explain the simple facts of how abortions are performed. For example.

As long as there were that balance, framed squarely in factual terms and presented with cool heads, then so be it.

11 comments:

  1. You must have seen Miliband's miserable answer to the question of a future Labour government taking the Royal Mail back into public ownership. He said that there may not be the money available to buy back the privatised services. But what about the idea that you have been floating? If the Labour party states its intent to bring it back then surely this would scupper any deal in the making? The money men might not want to take the risk. If he takes preventive action now it would probably never come to the situation of buying back.
    And if he were to state that his party would vote en bloc against the proposal then perhaps some 'old style' Tories and miscellaneous others might join him to defeat the measure.
    I remain to be convinced that he has any dynamism in his leadership.

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  2. We live in hope. Perhaps he is waiting for the Commons debate?

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  3. I agree with the above contributor.

    He certainly could stop this in Parliament if he wanted to-so we must assume he doesn't want to.

    We all saw, when it came to press censorship or gay marriage, just how ruthless and determined he can be to get his way when he wants to.

    He even saved Cameron from his own rebels on gay marriage-despite being (officially, at least,) the main Opposition. He had a perfect chance to split the Tories (and the Coalition) by helping the rebels wreck the Bill.

    Same with press regulation-he cut a backstage deal with Cameron and got it through, against enormous opposition.

    But then Miliband cares far more about censoring the press and destroying marriage than he does about such trivia as national independence.

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  4. I am still holding out for the Commons debate. Labour will of course vote against.

    They will not be the only ones. But there need to be more than the obvious others. This needs to be, as it ought to be, another Syria.

    And we need Chuka, flanked by the two Eds, to declare from the Despatch Box that Labour would renationalise, and that potential buyers needed to know that.

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  5. I was disappointed in Redwood on Any Questions-he's such a strong social conservative (one of the very few in Parliament in terms of his voting record) I can't understand why he thinks we should sell off a vital asset to foreign companies with no concern either for the people who deliver the post here, or the people who receive it.

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  6. Yes, I thought that. He is really very keen on this. It is terribly sad, and it augurs very ill for the parliamentary opposition.

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  7. He's also been principled in his opposition to the EU-particularly when defying Major and Cameron.

    Has nobody told him where the privatise- the-Mail policy originates?

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  8. I hate to say it but we're going to lose on rail privatisation.

    One day, you'll agree with Peter Hitchens that conservatism is dead and buried in Britain.

    We'll give you a few years to come round.

    Time for patriots to emigrate, as Peter never stops saying.

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  9. But pointedly never does.

    Nor ever will do.

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  10. He's frequently said if he was 30 once again, he'd emigrate in a flash.

    And he advises any 30-year-olds to do the same.

    He's quite right, to be honest.

    Britain and British conservatism, are finished.

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  11. He never says to where.

    And he has been to most places.

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